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Davie Defends His Job, Weakly
UHND.com - Frank Vitovitch
11/28/2001
Notre Dame, Ind (UHND) - Bob Davie was asked at his press conference today how he could defend why he should be coach next year and Davie responded with such answers has the high GPA of the team, the high graduation rate, the "conduct of the team", the fact that the University came to him with the extension, etc. He also stated that he took Notre Dame to its first BCS Bowl game in the history of the school. Well Bob, that's good since no other person has coached at Notre Dame since the BCS was created.
Bob also stated that Notre Dame went to this BCS game at a time when the talent level may not have been what it has in the past. Who's fault is that? All the players on last year's team with the exception of the 5th year seniors were all recruited by Bob Davie. So if talent was an issue who is to blame? Is it still Lou's fault for giving him a bare cupboard when the vast majority of the players were ones he recruited?
Davie also failed to mention that his team was blown out in the first ever BCS game for the school.. Neither did he mention the fact that he took Notre Dame to three bowl games, losing them all, nor the fact that while he took Notre Dame to one BCS game, Bobby Bowden took Florida State to three in the first three years of the BCS. All of Bowden's BCS games were for the national championship as well.
Another note that Davie failed to mention was that it wasn't the consensus opinion of the media that Notre Dame deserved its BCS bid last year. Notre Dame had a little help from its reputation to get there since there were other teams that were ranked higher than Notre Dame who had better records.
I will give it to Davie for getting the GPA up and having the high graduation rate, but based on on the field performance, Davie has failed miserably since he has been at Notre Dame. Going into the Fiesta Bowl I thought Davie had turned the corner and was about to take the next step as a head coach. However, Davie did the reverse and went back to his form from '99 when the Irish were 5-7.
Davie also likes to point out that his schedule is so hard. He points out how hard it is to play at Texas A&M at Kyle Field yet Iowa State, McNee State, Oklahoma State, and Baylor all gave the Aggies tougher contests in their backyard. Texas beat the Aggies this past weekend for their first home loss, but all of their other homes games were decided by two touchdowns or less expect the Notre Dame game. Overall, Texas A&M is 7-4 with a 5-1 record at home with wins against zero top 25 teams at Kyle Field.
Notre Dame's second loss of the year came at the hands of Michigan State. A team that is 5-5 this season with victories over one ranked opponent, Michigan, and with loses to Indiana, Minnesota, and Penn State. Notre Dame did face two top 5 teams this year in Nebraska and Tennessee and a top 10 team in Stanford but other than that no other ND opponent is ranked in the top 25. Welcome to a normal year with one of Lou Holtz's schedules. Lou's schedules were normally this hard yet he managed to put up at least 8 wins a seasons from 88-96. That's 9 seasons of eight plus wins in a row. Davie has done that twice in 5 years.
Of all the reasons Bob Davie gave for how he would defend his job, none of them were all that great. Yeah the GPA is up and the graduation rate is too, but its not as though they were horribly low when Holtz was here. Davie improved on the numbers Lou had, but his numbers were already good in the first place. While he improved off the field numbers, he drastically declined on the field results. His winning percentage ranks #20 out of 26 all time coaches at Notre Dame. He is 34-25 as a head coach in 5 years. And if you want to go by coaches who were at ND for more than three years, hehas the third worst winning percentage at ND.
It has been clear now for weeks that Davie is on his way out. He has the chance to do the admirable thing and resign which in theory would be on his own terms Although we all know he is gone no matter what, or he can force ND to fire him which seems more likely at this point.
The time for excuses has come to an end however. In another week hopefully we will be hearing about how their is a lot of talent at Notre Dame and how it is going to rise back into the nation's elite and not hearing about how hard next year's schedule is going to be and how hard it will be for Notre Dame to close the top recruits because of academic standards.